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TAOYUAN CITY, TAIWAN—A snake-shaped handle to a pottery vessel has been uncovered in northwestern Taiwan, at a site where a large-scale stone tool processing center has also been found, according to a Newsweek report. Researchers led by Hung-Lin Chiu of National Tsing Hua University found the artifact in a sand dune. It has been radiocarbon dated to some 4,000 years ago. Chiu said the snake handle resembles a cobra, with its head raised and bulging skin folds on its head and neck. “Snakes are often regarded as symbolic animals in religion, mythology, and literature, and are considered to be the bridge between heaven and man,” due to their ability to shed their skin, he added. To read about an Egyptian tomb at Abusir whose entrance wall was carved with magical spells intended to ward off serpents, go to "Spells Against Snakes."

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Archaeologists believe the rows of shallow pits drilled into the rock may have been used to play a version of the two-player strategy board game now known as Mancala.

A team of researchers led by Emrah Kirdök of Mersin University has analyzed three pieces of 10,000-year-old birch pitch, a sticky substance made by heating birch bark to form a glue-like substance. These pieces of birch pitch were recovered from Huseby Klev, a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer site in western Sweden. The researchers compared the ancient chewed birch pitch with modern samples, ancient human dental plaque, and a 6,000-year-old sample of chewed tar. They found higher levels of bacteria associated with poor dental health in the 10,000-year-old samples, even though chewing birch pitch may have provided some antiseptic and medicinal benefits. Using their teeth for gripping, cutting, and tearing may have exposed the hunter-gatherers to a wide variety of damaging microorganisms, the researchers suggest. DNA from hazelnut, apple, mistletoe, red fox, grey wolf, mallard, limpet, and brown trout were also identified. These materials, in the form of food, furs, and bone tools, may have been chewed by the people before they chewed the birch pitch. Article referenced here

No one knows what they were used for! Relative link found here

https://www.ancientpages.com/2023/12/12/rare-byzantine-gold-coin-norway/

Archaeologist Jorrit Kelder of the University of Hamburg believes that artists in the Hittite Empire, which ruled over Anatolia (modern Turkey) from about 1600 to 1200 B.C. from its capital at Hattusha, also created statues of deities out of both wood and precious materials that have since disappeared. He suggests that this silver fist, which for decades archaeologists have identified as a rhyton, a type of ritual vessel used for libations, may actually have been part of a life-size statue of the Hittite weather god, Tarhuna. “I’m very interested in challenging certitudes in our field that have been repeated so often and have never really been questioned since they were first proposed, and have since become facts in the archaeological narrative,” says Kelder. “The identification of the fist as a vessel struck me this way.”

Archaeologists working at a site called Blackfriars in Leicester, England, have recently found several clay roof and floor tiles with the prints of not only dogs, but also those of a cat and a sheep or goat, who all ran across the tiles as they were drying sometime in the second or third century A.D. While not an especially rare discovery, as such imprints have been unearthed at many Roman sites, “they are always a lovely find as they are such a unique snapshot into the past,” says project archaeologist Nick Daffern. “I think these kinds of finds bring the archaeology to life and give emotional engagement—you can imagine how the person reacted when they found their lovely batch of tiles had been disturbed.”

The key was likely used for a door or a chest and is similar to a common type of medieval key referred to as ‘London type VI’. These keys were large copper alloy keys with chunky proportions, typically measuring 80–100mm long. They had fully or partially hollow stems and large, complex bits. Though our key has similar characteristics to these keys, it is much smaller. Consequently, the key recovered from Claverham is likely a less common form of medieval key, which was similar in design, but much smaller (typically 50–70mm), which had simple bits.